23. Februar 1945
| Field post letters/Red Cross cards | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 ✉ to parents |
We’ve got a new roommate. He is a young officer who was to be brought to the Reich on a troopship. The ship he was on had been torpedoed on the high seas and sunk.[1] German escort vessels then fished him and most of his comrades out of the ice-cold water. It is February after all. Now he is lying here recovering from hypothermia. Some comrades are said to have paddled around in the icy water for more than two hours without suffering any visible damage. In any case, our roommate survived well. He is lively and funny. But he insists that he would rather stay in Courland than be torpedoed again.
Another new guest. A young lieutenant who was hit in the back like buckshot by fragments from a mortar shell. He is now being treated. He is lying on his stomach in bed and is bandaged up. He groans and moans. The two nurses are treating him very gently and talking to him lovingly. He is also holding up very bravely. It’s actually a miracle that he’s still alive.
I can get up again[2] and take my first walks to the portal down by the road. Just now, there are long columns of troops and vehicles. An officer runs back and forth giving orders. The soldiers are in a cheerful mood. It is a division that is being deployed to East Prussia. You can see that they are happy to get out of the enclosed fortress. A total of four divisions, including an East Prussian one, are to be transferred to East Prussia.[3]
Today I spoke to the hospital chaplain to enquire about the service times.[4] There is a saying hanging on the wall: “Our day of death is the soul’s most beautiful feast day, because it goes to the one who loves her the most.” Yes, that’s how death should be viewed: Birth to eternal life. Those who stand so firmly in faith and hope that they can overcome the animalistic fear of death truly have the peace of the soul that the world cannot give. True peace in the soul, despite death and destruction all around. But we are only human beings in this world, and the fear of death is natural. Only people of deep faith are free from it.
The priest has an errand to run and leaves me to wait in his room. Before he leaves, he gives me two bars of chocolate, which he keeps in a cardboard box. They are available to him for his visits to the wounded. Now I sit in front of his bookshelf and enjoy the rare pleasure of the chocolate and a good book. I preserve the second bar[5] of chocolate.
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- ↑ It must be the transporter ‘Göttingen’, which on 23 February 1945 coming from Stettin was sunk by a Soviet submarine’s torpedo shortly before Libau (see also Forum-Marinearchiv).
- ↑ Getting up for the first time is already mentioned in the field post letter of 17 Feb 45.
- ↑ This division is most likely the 93 I.D. or the 215 I.D. Between 2 February, when the transport of III SS-Pz.K. with (foreign) volunteer divisions from Courland to Pomerania and of the Pomeranian 32 I.D. and the Rhenish 227 I.D. to West Prussia is already underway, and 11 February the Bavarian 4th Pz.Div., Pomeranian 281 I.D. and Bohemian 389 I.D. Div. were deployed to West Prussia, between 9 and 15 February the Brandenburgian 93 I.D. to East Prussia. Then, between 22 and 26 February, the Württembergian 215th I.D. was taken to Danzig. An East Prussian division is not found in this period. (KTB OKW 1944–1945 S. 1064–1130; KTB OKH, NARA T-78 Roll 308 Band 137–139)
- ↑ The field post letter of 23 Feb 45 mentions the visit to the pastor.
- ↑ in the original “2 bars”